earthli News 3.7
https://www.earthli.com/news/2019-01-09T06:08:11+01:00https://www.earthli.com/news/icons/webcore_gif_silver/app/news_100px.gifhttps://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=36082019-01-08T21:51:27+01:00http://earthli.com/users/marco
"Avnery, who was one of the first Israelis to call for the creation of a
Palestinian state, was 94. He lived a sprawling life. He was born in Germany in
1923 and his family fled to British Palestine a few months after Hitler came to
power. As a young man, he dispersed leaflets for the Irgun, a terrorist Zionist
organization, and it haunted him for most of his life. Avnery would later play
chess with Yasser Arafat and become one of the PLO’s most ardent Israeli
defenders."
"Uri Avnery: One of My Few Heroes in the Middle East" by Robert Fisk
"It was somehow fitting that first news of Uri Avnery’s plight should reach me
from one of Israel’s staunchest enemies, the Lebanese Druze leader Walid
Jumblatt. One legend sending sad news of another, you see, a socialist preparing
to mourn a fellow socialist, sending his sympathy for the 94-year-old Israeli
political philosopher. That same philosopher was once a German Jewish schoolboy,
originally called Helmut Ostermann, who refused to give the Hitler salute at
school, but who was, when I received Jumblatt’s message – still, just – “an
indispensable mind to understand the history of fascism, a major destructive
element of the 20th century”. Jumblatt’s words. Avnery, he added, also
understood “the history of Zionism, another despicable apartheid theory that is
an offshoot of fascism”."
"I must admit that Uri Avnery was one of my Middle East heroes – there aren’t
many – and his story is worthy of a movie, though there will be no Spielbergs to
direct it: writer, journalist, leftist, veteran of the Israeli army in the
country’s War of Independence – and, as he never forgot, the same war which
drove 750,000 Palestinians from their home and lands."
The following two citations are from Avnery himself, included by Fisk in his
article.
"[citing Avnery]: I will tell you something about the Holocaust. It would be
nice to believe that people who have undergone suffering have been purified by
suffering. But it’s the opposite, it makes them worse. It corrupts. There is
something in suffering that creates a kind of egoism."
"[Again, citing Avnery]: You are presuming you know what they [Netanyahu’s
government] want and you presume they want peace – and therefore that their
policy is stupid or insane. But if you assume they don’t give a damn for peace
but want a Jewish state from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River, then what
they are doing makes sense up to a point."
Finally, I dug back through my as-yet unpublished notes to find some I'd taken
from Avnery's missives from the last couple of years, just to give an idea of
what I liked about his writings. I found notes from 2006--2018.
"Who's the dog? Who's the tail?" by Uri Avnery
"Two Nights and a Dragon" by Uri Avnery
"The authors do not call into question the Lobby's legitimacy. On the contrary,
they show that hundreds of lobbies of this kind play an essential role in the
American democratic system. The gun and the medical lobbies, for example, are
also very powerful political forces. But the pro-Israel lobby has grown out of
all proportion. It has unparalleled political power. It can silence all
criticism of Israel in Congress and the media, bring about the political demise
of anyone who dares to break the taboo, prevent any action that does not conform
to the will of the Israeli government."
"That year, during Black September, I held a press conference in Washington DC,
under the auspices of the Quakers. It seemed to be a huge success. The
journalists came straight from a press conference with Prime Minister Golda
Meir, and showered me with questions. Almost all the important media were
represented – TV networks, radio, the major newspapers. After the planned hour
was up, they would not let me go and kept me talking for another hour and a
half. But the next day, not a single word appeared in any of the media.
Thirty-one years later, in October 2001 I held a press conference on Capitol
Hill in Washington, and exactly the same thing happened: many of the media were
there, they held me for another hour – and not a word, not a single word, was
published."
A very astute reporter of foreign affairs -- in particular, those of Israel and
Palestine -- discusses Obama in "Two Americas" by Uri Avnery
.
"The great message of Obama is Obama himself. A person who has roots in three
continents (and another half: Hawaii). A person whose education spans the wide
world. A person who can see reality from the viewpoints of America, Africa and
Asia. A person who is both black and white. A new kind of American, an American
of the 21st Century."
This is lovely prose, but, as with many other Obama supporters, one gets the
feeling that more is being said by the supporter than by the supportee -- the
utopic views expressed so lovingly cannot be provably extrapolated from Obama's
actual, stated policy. However, in the same breath Avnery acknowledges this and
justifies it better than any other, to date:
"I am not as naïve as I sound. I realize that in his speeches there is more
enthusiasm than content. We can't know what he will do once elected president.
President Obama may disappoint us. But I prefer to take a risk with a man like
this than to know in advance what the two routine politicians, his competitors,
will do."
This is an excellent statement of support, which is wholly realistic and
accomodating of America's very limited political spectrum.
"Israel in Deadly Denial" by Uri Avnery
:
"All this matter of “recognition” is nonsense, a pretext for avoiding a
dialogue. We do not need “recognition” from anybody. When the United States
started a dialogue with Vietnam, it did not demand to be recognized as an
Anglo-Saxon, Christian and capitalist state."
"How Many Divisions?" by Uri Avnery
talks about propaganda in the
case of the ongoing attack on Gaza.
"The trouble is that propaganda is most convincing for the propagandist himself.
And after you convince yourself that a lie is the truth and falsification
reality, you can no longer make rational decisions."
"Hundreds of millions of Arabs from Mauritania to Iraq, more than a billion
Muslims from Nigeria to Indonesia see the pictures and are horrified. This has a
strong impact on the war."
"Even if the Israeli army were to succeed in killing every Hamas fighter to the
last man, even then Hamas would win. The Hamas fighters would be seen as the
paragons of the Arab nation, the heroes of the Palestinian people, models for
emulation by every youngster in the Arab world. The West Bank would fall into
the hands of Hamas like a ripe fruit, Fatah would drown in a sea of contempt,
the Arab regimes would be threatened with collapse.
"If the war ends with Hamas still standing, bloodied but unvanquished, in face
of the mighty Israeli military machine, it will look like a fantastic victory, a
victory of mind over matter.
"What will be seared into the consciousness of the world will be the image of
Israel as a blood-stained monster, ready at any moment to commit war crimes and
not prepared to abide by any moral restraints. This will have severe
consequences for our long-term future, our standing in the world, our chance of
achieving peace and quiet.
"In the end, this war is a crime against ourselves too, a crime against the
state of Israel."
"Ship of Fools 2" by Uri Avnery
"The Israeli government rules Washington, D.C., more firmly than ever. The new
Congress is even more loyal to Israel than the old one, if that is possible.
Just now, the outgoing House unanimously passed a resolution objecting to the
declaration of Palestinian statehood. After his resounding defeat in the midterm
elections, Obama must start to think about the presidential election in two
years’ time. It’s difficult to imagine that in these two years he would dare to
provoke the mighty Israel lobby, which can now rely not only on the Jewish
organizations and the millions of evangelical Christians, but also on the people
of the Tea Party (many of whom are anti-Semites like Nixon, as revealed in the
tapes: he despised the Jews and admired the Israelis).
"Obama can say what he wants: in a real test he will have to veto any Security
Council resolution which is distasteful to the Israeli government. He will have
no choice. And he will also supply Israel with all the airplanes it desires –
and more."
As put so nicely in the article, "Bin Laden Is Dead, but What About His Ideas?"
by Uri Avnery
"A new Caliphate in the 21st century is as unlikely as the wildest creation of
the imagination. It would have been diametrically opposed to the zeitgeist, were
it not for its opponents: the Americans. They needed this dream—or
nightmare—more than the Muslims themselves.
"The American Empire always needs an antagonist to keep it together and focus
its energies. This has to be a worldwide enemy, a sinister advocate of an evil
philosophy.
"[...]
"American freedoms have to be restricted; the U.S. military machine grows by
leaps and bounds. Power-hungry intellectuals babble about the Clash of
Civilizations and sell their souls for instant celebrity.
"To produce the lurid paint for such a twisted picture of reality, religious
Islamic groups are all thrown into the same pot—the Taliban in Afghanistan, the
ayatollahs in Iran, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, Indonesian
separatists, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and elsewhere, whoever. All become
al-Qaeda, despite the fact that each has a totally different agenda, focused on
its own country, while bin Laden aims to abolish all Muslim states and create
one Holy Islamic Empire. Details, details."
"A Putsch Against War" by Uri Avnery
"For eight years, longer than most of his predecessors, Dagan led the Mossad,
Israel’s foreign intelligence service, comparable to the British MI6.[...] And
here, after leaving office, he speaks out in the harshest terms against the
government’s plans for an attack on Iran’s nuclear installations. Not mincing
words, he said: "This is the stupidest idea I have heard in my life.""
"This week he was overshadowed by the recently relieved chief of the Shin Bet
[Yuval Diskin]. (Shin Bet and Shabak are different ways of pronouncing the
initials of the official Hebrew name "General Security Service.") It is
equivalent to the British MI5, but deals mostly with the Palestinians in Israel
and the occupied territories.
"According to Diskin – and who would know better? – Israel is now led by two
incompetent politicians with messianic delusions and a poor grasp of reality.
Their plan to attack Iran is leading to a world-wide catastrophe. Not only will
it fail to prevent the production of an Iranian atom bomb, but, on the contrary,
it will hasten this effort, this time with the support of the world community.
"Going further than Dagan, he stated that the only factor preventing peace
negotiations with the Palestinians is Netanyahu himself. Israel can make peace
with Mahmoud Abbas at any time, and missing this historic opportunity will bring
disaster upon Israel."
"The New Mandela" by Uri Avnery
"For some time now, the world has lost much of its interest in Palestine.
Everything looks quiet. Netanyahu has succeeded in deflecting world attention
from Palestine to Iran. But in this country, nothing is ever static. While it
seems that nothing is happening, settlements are growing incessantly, and so is
the deep resentment of the Palestinians who see this happening before their
eyes."
Contrast to how Pakistan was treated when it was (illegally) created a nuclear
weapon.
"A Bird’s-Eye View" by Uri Avnery
"The settlers assert that not a single settlement has been set up without secret
government consent. And indeed, all the “unlawful” settlements have been
connected at once to the water and electricity grids, special new roads have
been built for them, and the army has rushed to defend them — indeed the Israel
Defense Forces have long ago become the Settlements Defense Forces. Lawyers and
shysters galore have been employed to expropriate huge tracts of Palestinian
land."
"Another Superfluous War" by Uri Avnery
"Was there an alternative? Obviously, the situation along the Gaza Strip had
become intolerable. One cannot send an entire population to the shelters every
two or three weeks. Except hitting Hamas on the head, what can you do?
"A lot.
"First of all, you can abstain from “reacting”. Just cut the chain."
"A Lady With a Smile" by Uri Avnery
"It would cut the ties between the Israeli state and more than 20% of its
citizens. Some Israelis may dream of evicting the Arabs altogether from the
historical country – all six million of them in Israel proper, the West Bank and
the Gaza Strip – but that is a pipedream. The world in which this was once
possible does not exist any more."
"Trump and Israel’s Anti-Semitic Zionists" by Uri Avnery
"True, he is sending a rabid Jewish-American ultra-right Zionist as his
ambassador to Tel Aviv (or to Jerusalem, we shall see.) A person so right-wing
that he makes Netanyahu himself almost look like a leftist. But at the same time
Trump has appointed as his closest assistant a radical white racist with full
anti-Semitic credentials. Perhaps, as some believe, it depends entirely on
Trump’s moods. Who knows what his mood will be on the morning of the first
important UN vote on Israel? Will he be Trump the Zionist or Trump the
anti-Semite? Actually, he can be both. No problem, really. The avowed aim of
Zionism is to ingather all the Jews in the world in the Jewish State. The avowed
aim of the anti-Semites is to expel the Jews from all their countries. Both
sides want the same. No conflict."
So tongue in cheek. Keep on truckin', Uri!
"Syria: Cui Bono?" by Uri Avnery
"[the] day before, Trump was despised by half the American people, including
most of the media. Just by launching a few missiles, he has won general
admiration as a forceful and wise leader. What does that say about the American
people, and about humanity in general?"
"Yes, Israel Can Accept the Right of Return" by Uri Avnery
"When the British withdrew from Palestine in 1948, there were in the country
between the Mediterranean and the Jordan about 1.2 million Arabs and 635,000
Jews. By the end of the war that ensued, some 700,000 Arabs had fled and/or were
driven out. It was a war of what was (later) called "ethnic cleansing". Few
Arabs were left in the territory conquered by Jewish arms, but it should be
remembered that no Jews at all were left in the territory conquered by Arab
arms. Fortunately for our side, the Arabs succeeded in occupying only small
slices of land inhabited by Jews (such as the Etzion bloc, East Jerusalem et
al.), while our side conquered large, inhabited territories."
"Who is the Vassal? Israel, the US and Iran" by Uri Avnery
"The US is still far from war with Iran but we are not. Perhaps we are already
in it, without believing it. These days – or should I say, these nights – our
brave boys fly over Syria and bomb Iranian army installations there. Until this
minute, the Iranians have not reacted, except for a feeble attempt that was
quickly answered by a massive Israeli air strike."
"The Brainwashing of the Israelis" by Uri Avnery
"How is this done? It’s quite simple, really: one has to suppress all other
voices. One has to make sure that the citizen hears only one voice. One that
repeats a few messages over and over, endlessly. This way the lie becomes truth.
In such a situation, the ordinary citizen becomes convinced that the official
line is really their own personal opinion. This is an unconscious process. When
one tells a citizen that they are brainwashed, they are deeply insulted."
"The use of these terms, hundreds of times every day, clearly constitute
brainwashing, without the citizens noticing it. They are getting used to the
fact that all Gazans are terrorists, mekhablim. This is a process of
dehumanization, the creation of Untermenschen in the Nazi lexicon. Their killing
is allowed, even desirable."
"There is in the country a tiny band of commentators who are not afraid to tell
the truth, even when this is considered treason. Gideon Levy, Amira Hass, and a
few others. We must ensure that their voice is heard. They must be encouraged."
"Israelis Just Keep Killing People, Stealing Land" by Uri Avnery
"It has been said that a clever person is able to extricate himself from a trap
into which a wise person would not have fallen in the first place. Stupid people
do not extricate themselves. They are not even aware of the trap."
]]>
https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=36522019-01-07T22:25:26+01:00http://earthli.com/users/marco
.
As usual, his jokes highlight the topics he wanted to discuss.
He is a philosopher who many would call a contrarian. I think the reason that he
generally sees things differently than others is due to (A) his being extremely
widely and well-read and being able to provide a context to topics that others
don't have, as well as an ability to see similarities in topics and themes that
are not evident to others and (B) most people not being able to even follow
along with (A) and assuming that, because of his dirty jokes and his
multitudinous tics that he's just a showboat preening for attention. Nothing
could be further from the truth. If you read any of his books and truly
understand it, you'll be the better for it. To me, his reasoning is clear as a
bell. Perhaps that makes me mad, as well.
Here's his first joke:
"A group of Jews in a synagogue publicly are admitting their nullity in the eyes
of God.
"First, a rabbi stands up and says:
"“O God, I know I am worthless. I am nothing!”
"After he has finished, a rich businessman stands up and says, beating himself
on the chest:
"“O God, I am also worthless, obsessed with material wealth. I am nothing!”
"After this spectacle, a poor ordinary Jew also stands up and also proclaims:
"“O God, I am nothing.”
"The rich businessman kicks the rabbi and whispers in his ear with scorn:
"“What insolence! Who is that guy who dares to claim that he is nothing too!”"
Here's another joke:
"It's a very cruel joke and I discovered with wonder and respect that there is a
whole tradition of Jewish jokes about Auschwitz. Not making fun of it, but
drawing out the paradoxes.
"There is something very deep in this. [...] For tragedy to take place, it must
happen within certain limits, where the victim maintains his dignity -- you
know, the tragic victim. When things get really terrifying, a mote of comedy has
to enter, which is not comedy where you have to laugh, but horrifying comedy
(i.e. gallows humor).
"In Paradise, some Jews who'd been killed at Auschwitz were talking about how
they'd been killed. One says to the other,
""Do you remember, Jacob, when they dragged you to the death chamber, you
slipped on something and died even before you entered the gas chamber?"
""Oh, yeah, that was so funny!"
"Then God, taking a break, walks by them, listens to their jokes and says:
""Sorry guys, I just don't get it."
"[digression explaining background of joke for the young audience [1]]
"One of the Jews goes to God, embraces him in a patronizing way and says,
""Don't worry, our Lord, you weren't there, so, of course, you don't
understand."
"You know what's the beauty: it's not that God cannot understand the horror. He
can. He's all-powerful. He cannot understand it's possible to make a joke out of
it. God doesn't get the joke."
And what a world it is that we live in, when Slavoj answers the question of what
he thinks of the Gilets Jaunes with almost the same wording as Pamela Anderson.
Watch the video to see his answer (I don't feel like transcribing any more), but
Anderson's answer is from "Pamela Anderson on Europe’s Turmoil: an Interview
with Pamela Anderson and Srecko Horvat" by David Broder
"I agree with Srecko. As I said, when I was commenting on the gilets jaunes, the
real question is whether the disobedience can be constructive, what comes the
day after: can the progressives in France, and all over the world, use this
energy so that instead of violence we see equal and egalitarian societies being
built?"
It's a funny world.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] He explains the reason that the joke is funny: because it is always said
that divinity was absent from the Shoah, particularly Auschwitz.
]]>
https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=36452019-01-01T23:08:59+01:00http://earthli.com/users/marco
,
the illustrious journalist takes a break from writing about the
tragedies arising from near-constant, western meddling in the Middle
East to relate more uplifting stories...
]]>
,
the illustrious journalist takes a break from writing about the tragedies
arising from near-constant, western meddling in the Middle East to relate more
uplifting stories on this first day of 2019.
Near the end, there's a bit that -- to my admittedly tinhorn American ears -- is
one of the most British things I've ever read:
"Earlier this month we went for a drink and a meal to the wonderful Shipwright’s
Arms, one of Kent’s most attractive pubs, which is located in the Ham marshes
between Oare and Faversham, just below a dyke which protects it from the waters
of the Swale estuary. We sat down in front of a blazing fire, got a glass of
mulled wine [...]"
I have no further point other than that that sounds perfectly lovely.
]]>
https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=36222018-12-24T12:57:33+01:00http://earthli.com/users/marco
was founded 14 years
ago. as Mansef, a portmanteau of the owner's names. It has since
acquired nearly every significant online pornographic...
]]>
was founded 14 years ago. as Mansef, a
portmanteau of the owner's names. It has since acquired nearly every significant
online pornographic presence: Playboy, YouPorn, RedTube, PornHub and more.
They've not only cornered the market in free, online pornographic video, but
also hoovered up most of the classic producers and distributors, like Digital
Playground, Hustler, Vivid Video, Brazzers and more. They are almost certainly a
monopoly. Doubtless there are those who have a "favorite" site -- but the
content all comes from the same distribution company and from the same servers,
tailored for different tastes in presentation.
The only report I could find about distribution and numbers was "Vampire Porn"
by David Auerbach
.
The "vampire" refers to the fact that they cannibalize their own content by
having one arm of the company produce content whose price is killed instantly by
it being uploaded online for free by another arm of the company.
"[...] industry workers have been in the difficult situation of seeing their
work pirated on sites owned by the same company that pays them—imagine if Warner
Brothers also owned the Pirate Bay. The way Siri puts it, it’s as though Walmart
drove mom-and-pop stores out of business “and then to top it off, went into the
mom-and-pop shops and literally stole all of their products to be resold at
Walmart.” It’s a tough time to be a mom-and-pop porn shop."
]]>
https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=36212018-12-24T11:48:50+01:00http://earthli.com/users/marco
.
* Meagan Day interviews Kristin Ghodsee about her
...
]]>
.
* Meagan Day interviews Kristin Ghodsee about her book Why Women Have Better
Sex Under Socialism. They talk about life under socialist regimes (DDR lässt
grüssen) made men and women both more comfortable and try harder to be good
people (i.e. trophy wives couldn't just be bought) in "No Scrubs" by Kristin
Ghodsee
[1]
* The greatest trick the devil ever pulled is convincing us that plastics are
garbage: "The plastic backlash: what's behind our sudden rage – and will it
make a difference?" by Stephen Buranyi
* Speaking of tricks. Ricky Jay, the sleight-of-hand artist/genius, has died.
Here’s a lovely biographical piece from the New Yorker (1993): "Secrets of
the Magus" by Mark Singer
. It's
worth it for the nicely related anecdotes about Jay's feats. [2]
* And, finally, there's a long and sobering article on the loss of about 80%
of our insect biomass over the last 40 years, "The Insect Apocalypse Is
Here" by Brooke Jarvis
.
Dontworryaboutitwerefine. [3]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] Some more extended citations and notes from that article (all emphases are
added):
"Right now, Bulgaria and Romania have the highest percentage of women working
in tech in the EU. The reason is that there were policies in place that
allowed women to enter fields that in the West have remained dominated by
men. There was a concerted effort on the part of state socialist governments,
going all the way back to the thirties in the Soviet Union and the fifties in
Eastern Europe, to integrate women into formerly more masculine parts of the
economy — law, medicine, academia, banking. Women were even trained in the
military, as pilots and snipers and parachuters.""Male employment was often better remunerated. But, on the other hand, wages
don’t matter as much when the state is providing a huge array of social
services. The state guaranteed jobs, housing, health care, education, and
things like daycare and extended paid maternity leaves. Women were not
compensated as well as men, but they still had a greater degree of economic
independence from men than they do today.""The theory became a reality after 1917 in the Soviet Union, with the support
of Lenin and especially of Alexandra Kollontai, who was the commissar of
social welfare. Kollontai tried to put into place the socialization of child
care in the creation of children’s homes. She wanted to create public
canteens where people could eat. She wanted to create public laundries. She
also wanted to create mending cooperatives, because back then mending was a
huge task that women had to do at home and she thought it would be more
efficient if done collectively, reducing the burden on individual women. This
was all attempted in the early twenties. The problem is that the Soviet state
wasn’t wealthy enough and it collapsed. All of these laws were reversed by
1936 because Stalin said essentially, “We have to take our resources and file
them into the industrial economy, and it’s much more affordable for us to get
these women doing this work at home for free.” But importantly, those same
policies that Kollontai tried to implement in the twenties made a resurgence
in Eastern Europe after 1945.""And it turns out that when men have to be “interesting” in order to attract
women, they are. They actually end up being better men. It’s not that
difficult a concept. I don’t know why people are so shocked by this.""There were brilliant socialist feminists in the seventies, people like
Silvia Federici and others, who were making the case that large structural
changes would reorganize relationships between men and women. What happened
is that, as Nancy Fraser has written about, feminism was largely co-opted by
neoliberal capitalism. So we ended up getting a kind of Sheryl Sandberg-style
“lean in” feminism, which is all about individual success and creating
conditions for a handful of women to be as filthy rich as a handful of men
are.""For a host of reasons, care work for the elderly or the ill or certainly for
children often falls into the lap of women. Given that this work has to be
done, societies have a choice: they can reduce the burden of care work on
women by transferring it from the individual to society, or they can
completely devalue it and shove it into the private sphere where women do it
for free. [as Stalin did]""We shouldn’t ignore the purges and the gulags and the state violence, but we
have to be clear that it wasn’t like that all the time."
Just like we shouldn't ignore the horrific and varied violence of state
capitalism.
"Because I’m an ethnographer who’s been doing field work in Eastern Europe
for twenty years, I know many people who will tell you that life was much
more nuanced and complex, and not as overwhelmingly negative as Westerners
imagine. Certainly not everybody was marching around in Mao suits with shaved
heads, or starving in the streets and begging for a pair of jeans."
Ah, the myths we learn to avoid seeing greener grass.
[1] A quote:
"Yet far more than Malini’s contemporaries, the famous conjurers Herrmann,
Kellar, Thurston, and Houdini, Malini was the embodiment of what a magician
should be—not a performer who requires a fully equipped stage, elaborate
apparatus, elephants, or handcuffs to accomplish his mysteries, but one who
can stand a few inches from you and with a borrowed coin, a lemon, a knife, a
tumbler, or a pack of cards convince you he performs miracles.”"
[1] Some more extended citations and notes from that article (all emphases are
added):
"A 1995 study, by Peter H. Kahn and Batya Friedman, of the way some children
in Houston experienced pollution summed up our blindness this way: “With each
generation, the amount of environmental degradation increases, but each
generation takes that amount as the norm.” In decades of photos of fishermen
holding up their catch in the Florida Keys, the marine biologist Loren
McClenachan found a perfect illustration of this phenomenon, which is often
called “shifting baseline syndrome.” The fish got smaller and smaller, to the
point where the prize catches were dwarfed by fish that in years past were
piled up and ignored. But the smiles on the fishermen’s faces stayed the same
size. The world never feels fallen, because we grow accustomed to the fall.""There was a reason for the wariness. Society members dislike seeing
themselves described, over and over in news stories, as “amateurs.” It’s a
framing that reflects, they believe, a too-narrow understanding of what it
means to be an expert or even a scientist — what it means to be a student of
the natural world.""But extinction is not the only tragedy through which we’re living. What
about the species that still exist, but as a shadow of what they once were?
In “The Once and Future World,” the journalist J.B. MacKinnon cites records
from recent centuries that hint at what has only just been lost: “In the
North Atlantic, a school of cod stalls a tall ship in midocean; off Sydney,
Australia, a ship’s captain sails from noon until sunset through pods of
sperm whales as far as the eye can see. ... Pacific pioneers complain to the
authorities that splashing salmon threaten to swamp their canoes.” There were
reports of lions in the south of France, walruses at the mouth of the Thames,
flocks of birds that took three days to fly overhead, as many as 100 blue
whales in the Southern Ocean for every one that’s there now. “These are not
sights from some ancient age of fire and ice,” MacKinnon writes. “We are
talking about things seen by human eyes, recalled in human memory.”""It is estimated that, since 1970, Earth’s various populations of wild land
animals have lost, on average, 60 percent of their members. Zeroing in on the
category we most relate to, mammals, scientists believe that for every six
wild creatures that once ate and burrowed and raised young, only one remains.
What we have instead is ourselves. A study published this year in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that if you look at the
world’s mammals by weight, 96 percent of that biomass is humans and
livestock; just 4 percent is wild animals.""Thomas believes that this naturalist tradition is also why Europe is acting
much faster than other places — for example, the United States — to address
the decline of insects: Interest leads to tracking, which leads to awareness,
which leads to concern, which leads to action."
Or, that the "profit motive" comes between concern and action.
]]>
https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=34702017-12-10T22:32:02+01:00http://earthli.com/users/marco
, the AP Stylebook and
the Chicago Manual of Style agree:
"When a compound modifier–two or more words that express a single
concept–precedes a noun, use hyphens to link all the words in the compound
except the adverb very and all adverbs that end in -ly."
[Compound Adjectives]
Furthermore, I tend to agree with the AP Style, which writes that "[c]ompound
adjectives beginning with “well” are hyphenated no matter where they are in the
sentence." The Chicago Manual of Style thinks that "[w]hen such compounds follow
the noun they modify, hyphenation is usually unnecessary, even for adjectival
compounds that are hyphenated in Webster’s", which I consider to be blasphemy.
If it's defined in the dictionary, it seems quite arrogant for a style guide to
leave hyphenation up to the author and/or editor. They helpfully note that it's
"usually unnecessary", meaning that the reader will often be able to figure out
what's going on from context, so go ahead and put the burden on the reader.
Oxford (American version) muddies the waters even more by opining that the
hyphen is required when the adjective comes before the noun but not when it
comes after. Madness.
[Compound, compound adjectives]
Additionally, if you have multiple hyphens, you can emphasize the secondary one
(or ones) by using an n-dash rather than a hyphen.
For example, the phrase "a red-jewel--encrusted dagger" needs two hyphens. The
n-dash is between "jewel" and "encrusted".
If you don't use hyphens at all, you leave the reader swimming in a sea of
confusion. They will probably have to take multiple runs at your sentence in
order to make sense of it.
* A red-jewel--encrusted dagger (definitely a dagger encrusted with red
jewels)
* A red-jewel encrusted dagger (probably a dagger encrusted with red jewels)
* A red, jewel-encrusted dagger (a red dagger encrusted with jewels)
* A red jewel encrusted dagger (an unreadable pileup of words)
[Non-hyphenated words [2]]
Where things get a bit murkier is when you have two words that form a single
word, but have done so for a long time. Eventually, the words agglutinate
without a hyphen. For example, the world "hellbent" is written without a hyphen,
but it's unclear why. There are also a lot of words starting with the syllable
"re" (redistribution, recycling, etc.) that don't take a hyphen. When in doubt,
look it up in a dictionary. I do it all the time. We have the knowledge of the
world at our fingertips [3] and our spelling and grammar is getting worse and
worse.
[Coda]
Two more things:
* The past tense of "lead" is spelled "led", not "lead".
* It's either "whence" or "from where", It's never "from whence", which is
redundant.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] Do you see what I did there? It's called foreshadowing. [4]
[1] There's another one. Other words, like "finger-dry" are hyphenated.
[1] More foreshadowing, which is also foreshadowing.
[1] That's actually foreshadowing for the final section.
]]>
https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=34662017-12-10T15:32:03+01:00http://earthli.com/users/marcohttps://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=34542017-11-12T13:50:11+01:00http://earthli.com/users/marco
starts off well
enough, asking whether we will be able to actually address the giant problem of
which Harvey Weinstein's alleged actions are just a symptom, then goes on to
indict anyone and everyone who's ever worked with him and anyone who would be
willing to watch any movie made by his production company, now that we know
those movies were produced by a(n alleged) monster. For example
"All this would be egregious enough were it only a labor concern, but the
influence of Miramax and the Weinstein Company as media entities must be
accounted for, and the cultural products they released reviewed in the context
in which they were created. How are we to parse the nuanced gender dynamics of
films like Pulp Fiction (1994) and Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989) now that we
know they were brewed in a cauldron of sexualized violence?"
We absolutely don't have to parse those movies any differently. That's a stupid
thing to think. You are wasting everyone's time with such investigations. There
are several other avenues more important to pursue. She continues,
"The laughable travails of a woman whose boss takes credit for her labor in
Working Girl (1988) makes more sense in a industry that granted virtually no
serious power to women; the unacknowledgeable intelligence of the sex worker at
the heart of Woody Allen’s Mighty Aphrodite (produced by Miramax in 1995) is
also, suddenly, explicable (as is the continued ability of Allen to work in the
industry)."
Are you trying to say we all just found out about sexism? This lens she's using
through which to view everything distorts too much. Weinstein has been
"prosecuted" in the sense that the industry has ejected him now that it no
longer has anything to gain from him. I don't really care about Harvey
Weinstein, but I do care about justice. And justice doesn't just include
Weinstein's alleged victims getting their day in court, but also Weinstein not
getting smeared unfairly. Or Woody Allen, though it's a bit unclear which smear
the author is going for, exactly.
"But Weinstein’s legacy—decades of films in which his politics became embedded
in our lives—has yet to perish. Here’s hoping I’m proven wrong when I loft this
prediction, too: It never will."
Nor should it be. Why should they? He didn't make these movies alone. He was
barely involved in the creative side of it. Why punish everyone involved in
those movies with such a scorched-earth policy? Ah, because that's how people
think justice works near the end of the second decade of the 21st century. What
makes us unhappy must be eradicated not only from our vision, but from history.
Anyone who does not comply is a thought criminal.
Moving right along to the next article is "The Hannah Arendt Center’s Dark
Thinking" by John Ganz
, which writes about
German politics,
"In January, AfD state leader in Thuringia Björn Höcke called the Holocaust
memorial in Berlin, which is flanked by Hannah-Arendt-Strasse, a “monument of
shame.”"
But that's exactly what it was meant to be, isn't it? Calling it what it is can
hardly be deemed anti-Semitic. Part of its purpose is to remind Germans of what
they did -- the definition of shame. I can see several reasons for condemning
what AfD member think and say, but it's utterly uninteresting to have to defend
them when others take a scorched-earth policy to absolutely every statement
they've ever made. This is similar to the way that people still pile on
absolutely every statement that Trump makes -- as if his stupid ones are still
particularly interesting as additional evidence of his inadequacy for the office
and as if his more salient ones are stupid when they're not.
While the Baffler seems to be stumbling of late (in my opinion), the article
"The Weinstein Empire: Extreme as Normal" by Barbara Nimri Aziz
addresses the same issue in a more interesting and historical context, starting
off with the following citation,
"A serious problem in America is the gap between academe and the mass media,
which is our culture. Professors of humanities, with all their leftist
fantasies, have little direct knowledge of American life and no impact whatever
on public policy."
This is an excellent point to make, especially in light of the Baffler articles
above: many people live in a bubble and don't realize what the rest of the world
is doing. That's not to say that they're wrong, in principle, but that their
tactics are doomed to failure. Aziz offers the following much-more-useful advice
for making something lasting out of the Weinstein revelations (even if nothing
official ever comes out of it).
"What might help reform the entrenched misogyny that’s been exposed in the
Weinstein scandal is this: explore how and why we– young men as well as women–
are attracted to power; why our self esteem depends so much on our beauty, being
gazed at. Why do we dash after anything that ‘goes viral’? Why do we want far
more money than we need to live? Why can we not say “No” to a cleric’s advances,
to a sport star’s invitation, to a boss’ wink, to promises of greater success?"
Please don't jump to the conclusion that Aziz is blaming the victim. That's a
facile interpretation. The interesting point that she's making is that, instead
of protecting the victim from the vagaries of the world, we should change the
world so that it no longer creates victims. Take away the power that the world
has over such potential victims not by transferring that power, but by banishing
it from the world. If you don't want what abusers have then you're no longer a
potential victim. Instead of trying to beat them at their own game, you can win
by not playing at all.
"Camille Paglia boldly took on mainstream feminists. In a sustained series of
exchanges, many of which appear in her 1992 collection Sex, Art and American
Culture she declares, “Feminists keeps saying the sexes are the same…telling
women they can do anything, go anywhere, say anything or wear anything. “No they
can’t.” Paglia exclaims. She attacks what she sees as mostly white, educated
feminists for their “pie-in-the-sky fantasies about the perfect world (that)
keep young women from seeing life as it is.” As a result, she argues, “Women
want all the freedoms won, but they don’t want to acknowledge the risk. That’s
the problem”."
[Antifa is part of the Problem]
Next up is the article "The Harmful Effects of Antifa" by Diane Johnstone
, which
continues Johnstone's nuanced discussion of the new, young and purported left.
She sees a similar problem to the one I point out above with the Baffler
articles: this tendency to black-and-white-ism, to espousing Bush Jr.'s
simplistic philosophy of "if you're not with us, you're against us". To that
end, they posit a world in which the thing they're against is everywhere,
"This fantasy of omnipresent neo-fascism is as necessary to Antifa as the
fantasy of omnipresent anti-Semitism is to Israel."
And then associate everyone who disagrees in any way whatsoever with that evil,
delineating "teams".
"Antifa rhetoric specializes in non sequitur. If you agree with some
conservative or libertarian that it was wrong to destroy Libya, then you are not
only guilty of association with a pre-fascist, you are a supporter of dictators
and thus probably a fascist yourself. This has been happening in France for
years and it’s just getting started in the United States."
Johnstone refers to another article she wrote, "Antifa in Theory and Practice"
by Diane Johnstone
, in
which she offered her initial analysis of that movement. The following are
citations that I found interesting. The first two point out that the tactics of
Antifa play right into the hands of the state.
"I am not suggesting that all, or most, Antifa are agents of the establishment.
But they can be manipulated, infiltrated or impersonated precisely because they
are self-anointed"
"The moral of this story is simple. Self-appointed radical revolutionaries can
be the most useful thought police for the neoliberal war party. I am not
suggesting that all, or most, Antifa are agents of the establishment. But they
can be manipulated, infiltrated or impersonated precisely because they are
self-anointed and usually more or less disguised."
Johnstone continues, noting that Antifa's "purity tests" are not only ironically
fascist tools, but are highly counterproductive. Establishing a policy of
ruthless scouring of contrary opinion will always turn around and bite you.
"[...] even the most justifiable emotional concerns do not necessarily
contribute to wise counsel. Violent reactions to fear may seem to be strong and
effective when in reality they are morally weak and practically ineffectual. We
are in a period of great political confusion. Labeling every manifestation of
“political incorrectness” as fascism impedes clarification of debate over issues
that very much need to be defined and clarified."
"In another vein, Antifa follows the trend of current Identity Politics excesses
that are squelching free speech in what should be its citadel, academia. Words
are considered so dangerous that “safe spaces” must be established to protect
people from them. This extreme vulnerability to injury from words is strangely
linked to tolerance of real physical violence."
"In the United States, the worst thing about Antifa is the effort to lead the
disoriented American left into a wild goose chase, tracking down imaginary
“fascists” instead of getting together openly to work out a coherent positive
program."
Much of this debate is distracting. And the real enemies (hint: those who are
and have been happily and cozily in power) are happy to see so many potential
party-crashers wasting their time. As Johnstone puts it,
"The truly dangerous people in the United States are safely ensconced in Wall
Street, in Washington Think Tanks, in the executive suites of the sprawling
military industry, not to mention the editorial offices of some of the
mainstream media currently adopting a benevolent attitude toward “anti-fascists”
simply because they are useful in focusing on the maverick Trump instead of
themselves."
"The facile use of the term “fascist” gets in the way of thoughtful
identification and definition of the real enemy of humanity today. In the
contemporary chaos, the greatest and most dangerous upheavals in the world all
stem from the same source, which is hard to name, but which we might give the
provisional simplified label of Globalized Imperialism. This amounts to a
multifaceted project to reshape the world to satisfy the demands of financial
capitalism, the military industrial complex, United States ideological vanity
and the megalomania of leaders of lesser “Western” powers, notably Israel. It
could be called simply “imperialism”, except that it is much vaster and more
destructive than the historic imperialism of previous centuries. It is also much
more disguised. And since it bears no clear label such as “fascism”, it is
difficult to denounce in simple terms. (emphasis added.)"
"The fixation on preventing a form of tyranny that arose over 80 years ago,
under very different circumstances, obstructs recognition of the monstrous
tyranny of today. Fighting the previous war leads to defeat."
Johnstone's characterization is eloquent and not at all hyperbolic. Above, we
chastise those wasting their time fighting the wrong enemy, chasing chimeras of
suspected heresy in pockets of potential supporters. But those of us who see
where the dangers really lie must soberly acknowledge that we are also forced
to waste our time. Instead of actually fighting the enemy, we expend nearly all
of our energy merely trying to convince anyone other than a tiny minority that
the enemy even exists. We face resistance on even this front from all sides,
including -- sometimes, especially -- those we seek to recruit to our cause. We
have basically lost this war and must look to the next one, if we're to be at
all honest with ourselves.
And that's where Johnstone points out the most destructive feature of Antifa:
"Antifa has gone on the offensive against the one weapon still in the hands of
the people: the right to free speech and assembly."
This is more than shooting yourself in the foot -- it's shooting potential
insurrection in the head and setting back any potential cause by years, if not
decades. How are you supposed to sow dissent and build insurrection if even your
supposed ideological compatriots are undermining your right to even discuss
possibly subversive topics? A nearly hopelessly difficult slog is made even
harder by such tactics.
[The Rest of the World]
And what of the now-nearly-year-long propaganda push to blame everything on the
Russians? As reported in "The Anti-Empire Report #152" by William Blum
, as recently as June 2017, that opinion
is oddly not shared by the Pentagon.
"The Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency issued a report in June entitled
“Russia: Military Power: Building a military to support great power
aspirations”. Here’s an excerpt: Moscow seeks to promote a multi-polar world
predicated on the principles of respect for state sovereignty and
non-interference in other states’ internal affairs, the primacy of the United
Nations, and a careful balance of power preventing one state or group of states
from dominating the international order. To support these great power ambitions,
Moscow has sought to build a robust military able to project power, add
credibility to Russian diplomacy, and ensure that Russian interests can no
longer be summarily dismissed without consequence. … Russia also has a deep and
abiding distrust of U.S. efforts to promote democracy around the world and what
it perceives as a U.S. campaign to impose a single set of global values."
The Pentagon used quite flowery language, but they are basically saying that
Russia's only mistake is not granting primacy to U.S. interests. For that, they
must be eliminated.
The U.S. is stuck in a mindset that will no longer be tenable once we've burned
out our resources. The climate is shifting already. It will be a different type
of society from our soft, privileged and somnambulant one to survive it. The
article "Making Ourselves Small That We May Be Large" by Kim C. Domenico
discusses the transition from what we have now to what we must become.
"My husband chides the climate activists whose proposals suggest the pending
climate disaster can be turned around by tweaking our technology, without giving
up our western, “de-sensed” world. These voices are less marginalized than the
more radical ones who aren’t inclined to “mince words.” Those who see the
catastrophe headed straight for us, those acting as our elders “leaving out
flattery and retaining the criticism,” point the way we must go in for the
collective good, not for the short term good of those currently
profiting/profiteering/plundering. They recognize that everything has to change;
our much convenienced way of life must return to its basis in relatedness, for
life as we know it is coming to an end."
"From this perspective, catastrophe is the necessary defeat that can return one
to being human, which I am calling “making ourselves small,” or as Powys
expressed it, “sinking into ourselves and into Nature.”"
The article "The Serious Price of the Hyperconvenient Economy" by Ralph Nader
pleads with us to try to control our fates, to not be fooled into wanting that
which is offered by our would-be enslavers.
"Technology driven by narrow commercial interests needs to provoke us into
asking, “What’s all this convenience doing over the long run? What kind of
community and society is coming out of this unassessed marketing?” For a better
future, we must mobilize, community by community, for some inconvenient thoughts
and organization. Unless, that is, the corporate future doesn’t need us."
In that sense, other concerns shrink to insignificance. When a handful of tech
and media companies control most people's thoughts from dawn 'til dusk,
elections have become mostly moot and climate catastrophes are piling up, what
exactly is the point of something like nation states? Won't we see an increasing
balkanization? It's hard to care specifically about a single one, like the one
in the ostensibly quite-wealthy Catalan. The article "Catalan Independence
Flounders on the Rocks of Reality" by John Wight
discusses how even that effort
is receding into the mists of public memory, much as the various Arab Springs
did.
"In politics, as in war, knowing when to retreat is as important as knowing when
to advance; with the former often more difficult and requiring of more courage
than the latter due to the challenge it brings of managing the unrealistic
expectations and demands of some within your own ranks – those for whom any
backward step is tantamount to betrayal. With this in mind, it is clear that
Puigdemont, faced with the choice of acting sensibly in the face of the
aforementioned balance of forces militating against UDI, or succumbing to the
pressure exerted against his leadership from within his own movement, opted to
succumb."
It is a shame that we can't pay enough attention, because there is a deeper
battle to be fought: against the poisonous neoliberalism that sucks the
remaining life from humanity's failing husk, feeding a tiny group of the
privileged. The longer we let them continue, the more difficult any transition
will be. But revolution always comes late, not early and nearly always
catastrophic, by definition. The overthrown will burn the world rather than give
up their throne.
"Moreover, it bears repeating that its underlying is the same one that has
fuelled support for Scottish independence in recent years; the same one that
drove Brexit and which is behind the emergence and traction of anti-EU parties
across Europe. That cause is an economic model, neoliberalism, whose
sustainability was shattered irrevocably by the global financial crash and
ensuing recession, starting in 2008. (Emphasis added.)"
"Yet instead of burying the corpse of neoliberalism, as they should have,
political elites have for purely ideological reasons extended themselves in
trying to breath life back into it with the imposition of austerity programs
that have sown even more misery and dislocation in the lives of millions of
their own citizens. Thus they are authors of their own demise."
The key takeaway here is: they are the "authors of their own demise" -- and most
of them know it, but don't care. They will fail upwards, as they always have and
will suffer little.
The article "By Killing ISIS Fighters Instead of Bringing Them to Justice, We
Become as Guilty as Our Enemies" by Robert Fisk
discusses the untenable attitude toward justice in modern discussions. Some
people just have to die, right?
"When George W Bush talked about bringing the bad guys to justice after 9/11, I
wrote that I very much doubted if any justice would be coming Osama bin Laden’s
way. And I was right. He was assassinated by the Americans. And nobody,
naturally enough, complained about it. Live by the sword, die by the sword. But
bin Laden’s death – and the ocean of drone attacks that followed – gave a
gently, dark signal that it’s OK to murder these bad guys. Forget about courts,
evidence, trials, justice and the rest. Just obliterate them. Who is going to
complain?"
This applies just as well to the various pillory-by-media stories we've been
reading of late. An uncomfortably large number of people seem to be just fine
with letting Twitter and Facebook and the media decide who is guilty and
deciding which punishment is fitting. This is vigilante justice and no different
than witch trials. The initial (and alleged) perpetrators may feel deserving,
but we will be ill-equipped to notice -- or be able to complain -- when the
people on trial's crimes are less clear-cut. The precedent will have been
established and the power of judgment will have landed securely in the hands of
an unelected, mercurial and extremely vindictive minority.
But the article "The End of Empire" by Chris Hedges
is much better at
describing the way the world looks to the 99% (most of whom do not live in the
U.S. or Europe, by the way). Hedges is an inspiring speaker, but his conclusions
are often sobering to the point of depressing, even as you find yourself unable
to disagree in more than minor details.
"Our democracy has been captured and destroyed by corporations that steadily
demand more tax cuts, more deregulation and impunity from prosecution for
massive acts of financial fraud, all the while looting trillions from the U.S.
treasury in the form of bailouts. The nation has lost the power and respect
needed to induce allies in Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa to do its
bidding. Add to this the mounting destruction caused by climate change and you
have a recipe for an emerging dystopia."
What will happen after the U.S. finally burns itself out in a supernova of
hubris and stupidity? The ersatz nation-states called multinationals that were
born in the crucible of its neoliberal policies will smoothly take over, with
nary a whimper from their pliable and mostly willing citizens. See "All of the
World’s Money and Markets in One Visualization"
for a visual overview of how large certain individuals and corporations have
become relative to nations and their money supplies.
"[...] perhaps there will be a multipolar world carved up among Russia, China,
India, Brazil, Turkey, South Africa and a few other states. Or maybe the void
will be filled, as the historian Alfred W. McCoy writes in his book “In the
Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power,” by “a
coalition of transnational corporations, multilateral military forces like NATO,
and an international financial leadership self-selected at Davos and Bilderberg”
that will “forge a supranational nexus to supersede any nation or empire.”"
Our new multinational rulers' brand of bullshit may have an even shorter
half-life than that of the U.S., which has survived for a long time on the
inertia of the world's misplaced gratitude after World War II. It will be
painful to be around when it crumbles and the next rulers step in. They are
unlikely to be more benevolent, cut as they are from the same cloth as their
progenitors. We can already see traces of their power in the ongoing transition
from national to corporate power today.
"England was able to hold its empire together from 1815 to 1914 before being
forced into a steady retreat. America’s high-blown rhetoric about democracy,
liberty and equality, along with basketball, baseball and Hollywood, as well as
our own deification of the military, entranced and cowed much of the globe in
the wake of World War II. Behind the scenes, of course, the CIA used its bag of
dirty tricks to orchestrate coups, fix elections and carry out assassinations,
black propaganda campaigns, bribery, blackmail, intimidation and torture. But
none of this works anymore."
The article "The Simulacra Democracy" by John Steppling
is long and
somewhat rambling, but included several eminently quotable bits. It discusses
the massive propaganda machine that is the mainstream media. It discusses how
this media is -- and always has been -- an arm of the Pentagon and the
government's secret agencies, if not in name, then in spirit. The U.S.
government could not have wished for a more supportive and compliant media over
the decades.
"[...] a nation in which 87 percent of eighteen- to twenty-four year olds
(according to a 2002 National Geographic Society/Roper Poll survey) cannot
locate Iran or Iraq on a world map and 11 percent cannot locate the United
States (!) is not merely “intellectually sluggish.” It would be more accurate to
call it moronic, capable of being fooled into believing anything …” — Morris
Berman"
"If one only gets one’s news from MSNBC or FOX or CNN then one will take away
mostly pure propaganda. Rachel Maddow has a career based on craven parroting of
DNC approved talking points and conclusions. Bill Maher, whose show is on HBO,
is of late pimping for war. Sunday news talk shows do not invite radical voices,
not ever."
"But Americans are discouraged from thinking in terms of class. They see
individualism and identity. Get me more women directors they cry….which would
give us more versions of Zero Dark Thirty, I guess. Gender equality matters,
something every single socialist country in history has emphasized. Something
Chavez saw fit to write into the Bolivarian constitution on day one. Chavez, who
liberal avatar Bernie Sanders dismissed as a “dead communist dictator”. Chavez,
who feminist avatar Hillary Clinton worked overtime to oust from power.
(Emphasis added.)"
What did Trump say about Chavez? Who cares? Could it have been worse than what
the supposed leading lights of liberal democracy said about him? Essentially
promulgating state lies? Do they honestly believe it? Or are they cynically
repeating what the Pentagon and deep state wants to hear in order to get closer
to the nexus of power? Who cares? It doesn't matter to those of out here, in the
cold. To us, they are part of the problem, no matter their reasons.
"Mike Pompeo, head of the CIA, recently stated that his agency would become a
“much more vicious agency” in fighting its enemies. Its actually hard to imagine
what that might look like given CIA history. More vicious than rendition, drone
killing and black site torture? Remember it was the U.S. and its School of the
Americas that trained those death squads in Central America. Hollywood makes
comedies about this. In any event nobody in Hollywood complains. Just as none of
the actresses assaulted by Weinstein (and countless others) said anything lest
they lose career opportunities. Just as nobody complains about the racism and
demonizing of Muslims or Serbs or North Koreans or Russians lest they not get
the job. Coercion is silent and a given. It is also absolute. Most actors and
directors simply don’t think about it, and most know little beyond what they
hear on corporate news or read in the NYTimes. (Emphasis added.)"
"A good rule of thumb is if the U.S. targets a country or leader, then its worth
questioning the western-generated propagated propaganda in mainstream media
about said country or leader (think Syria, Gadaffi, Aristide, Milosovic, Iran,
North Korea). The U.S. does not go after countries who welcome western capital."
Our national amnesia leads to our doom. Our poor understanding of history -- or
our internalization of government propaganda as real history -- makes us easily
manipulated. As Steppling concludes:
"It is a world created by writers under thirty, largely, and certainly under
forty. These are worlds created by people who themselves know very little of the
world. They know even less about having to work for a living. The entire
universe of film is absent any class awareness. History is simplified the better
to appeal to a wider audience. Everything feels and sounds the same. And it is
stultifying. There are films and TV from Europe, even from the U.K. that have
merit, have heterogeneous sensibilities, but not from Hollywood."
And Hollywood controls a great deal of what people see and hear, when they're
just relaxing and trying get away from news. It is then that they are most
pliable, most easily brainwashed. It is then that pick up what they will come to
think of as their "own" opinions. It is difficult to think of a way of fighting
such an insidious, gigantic and omnipresent machine.
]]>
https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=34322017-07-29T23:40:41+02:00http://earthli.com/users/marcohttps://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=34242017-05-22T17:12:30+02:00http://earthli.com/users/marco
tool actually does or whether
it does it well.
[image]
All I know is that it definitely doesn't do it seemlessly.
]]>
tool actually does or whether it does
it well.
[image]
All I know is that it definitely doesn't do it seemlessly.
]]>